Re: IBM discoveries Charge Back...

On Jun 15, 2007, at 7:57 AM, Kelman, Tom wrote:

Ed,

Actually I find it interesting that you should say what you have. It is
my understanding that while it is true that IBM has not had anything to
process the data in the past, the original purpose of SMF was to provide
accounting data for chargeback purposes. It took a while and some head
pounding by SHARE, GUIDE, and CMG members to get IBM to put some good
performance data into SMF.

Tom Kelman
Commerce Bank of Kansas City
(816) 760-7632


Tom:

I agree that it took a lot of head pounding from users (you listed) to get IBM to provide the data, I think I said as much in my entry.
After all this time of being asked, IBM appears to have listened. What may have happened (and its only a guess mind you) is that the number of OEM providers have thinned out so much that IBM finally saw a chance to make some money. I have not kept up with the OEM smf "reporters" but there are only a few left after all this time. The two that pop to the front of my memory is MICS and MXG (there could be others but these are sort of the ones that have been around the longest, IMO. MICS is sort of the Rolls Royce and MXG is at the other extreme (cost wise).

There may be others out there that are well known but I have not heard a lot about them in recent talk on here. Indeed there have been more that a few people on here that have poopoohed the idea of collecting the data. I don't wish to second guess their reasons but IIRC the reason of cost in & storage of such data is expensive. I think while that is true there has to be some idea and costing to show what the users are paying for does make sense. While it may be up in the area on how fine a detail you need to capture, its probably a good idea for for a rough idea. Especially since the cost of storing the data has come down over the years with the virtual drives. I know at one time we were worried about capturing almost everything down to the byte level I think its reasonable now to capture a "reasonable" picture of the data.

One thing that had bothered me is charge back for PSF printing . I could never reconcile with the data that IBM provided was a way to figure out cost for it, that is a different issue and I may be hung up on the bits and bytes to offer any good argument in that area.

One of the other big issues is to come up with dollar figures for overhead and I have literally seen the spectrum of opinions. I think it comes down to how serious the company wants to show costs.

I am happy that IBM is showing renewed interest in this area but it is surprising as after years of neglect the "parent" is finally bearing fruit.

Ed

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